Something of a Tragedy
"Something of a Tragedy" was the sixth Special Comment delivered on the Current TV incarnation of Countdown with Keith Olbermann, airing on 26 October 2011. The Comment And now, as promised, a brief special comment about the astonishing brutality inflicted on the Occupy Oakland protesters over the last 48 hours. Jean Quan has spent more than 20 years in service to the people of the Bay Area. She started with grassroots work to improve Oakland's' schools, save its music programs, incorporate the history of the area's minority communities, save the libraries, save the zoos, save the museums, save the arts, push back against the tides of pollution and deregulation and -- even in the summer of 2010 -- to take part, as a member of the city council, in the protests against the jury verdict after a transit-police officer had shot and killed an unarmed black man the year before. And in the last two nights Mayor Jean Quan of Oakland has betrayed all of that. There is no excuse. There is no justification. There is no rationalization for being the mayor who may have begun the great march backward in this country to the days when mayors like Sam Yorty of Los Angeles and Hugh Addonizio of Newark and Richard Daley of Chicago stood back as their police incited, bullied, overreacted and brutally assaulted protesters at the height of the civil rights and Vietnam movements. Those protests began non-violently, positively -- with singing and marches and cooperation with the authorities. But the police -- like the police in Oakland, California, this week -- they injected the violence, and it escalated and echoed and soon there wasn't just one Iraq vet in a hospital with a fractured skull, but there were dead men and women on the streets of this country, and no one in this country wants to see that again today. The mayor of any city is not out on the front lines with the cops, and not everything they do can be lain at the mayor's feet, but if, one night, a group of peaceable protesters exercising the rights given to them under the Constitution -- and not rights made up by the cops for the cops, like "lawful command" and "imminent threat" -- if they are attacked with tear gas and rubber bullets, and the mayor's only comments are to commend the police chief for a "generally peaceful resolution to a situation," and, after that, claim "Democracy is messy," after the unprovoked actions of those police horrify a nation -- she is endorsing, and assuming for herself the responsibility for, whatever havoc the out-of-control police officers have wrought. If this country were not poised on a vital, urgent and massive change -- in which, no longer, will we permit governments to aid and abet class warfare by the rich -- Jean Quan's story would be recognized as something of a tragedy. But right now, there is only time to note that -- in July, 2010, when she attended as a "peace keeper" the protest of the police murder of Oscar Grant -- Oakland police responded by opening an investigation on her and threatening to file charges against her. Fifteen months ago, Mayor Jean Quan was bullied by the Oakland Police Department, and tonight -- she is the bully. Mayor Quan is left with two choices. She can dismiss the acting Police Chief Howard Jordan, and use her mayoral powers to authorize Occupy Oakland to protest again without harassment. Or -- having betrayed all she supported and all of those who supported her -- she must resign. Notes See Also Category:2011 Special Comments Category:Occupy Movement